So did you get a Ps4 Pro? Was it worth it?

[MMaRsu]

As the topic title states.. did you get a Ps4 Pro, and in your opinion was it worth the 400$ to upgrade?

Im not really interested in buying a 4k tv anytime soon, I just last year got a new TV for my birthday so yea thats not happening.

Personally im just curious if the peeps here who bought one are happy with it and think the differences improve enough as to make it worth its asking price.

[Bebpo]

Yeah, been using it for Watchdogs 2 and 100% satisfied.  Getting that 4k downsampled to 1080p playable bullshot iq with locked smooth 30fps that doesn't drop a frame, fantastic for one of the best games of the year.  If the PC version is quality, I could get the same on my PC since I have a $2k gaming rig, but now I don't even need to take the chance and can just enjoy the game.  Since honestly, most AAA console to PC ports are shoddy these days, it's nice to have a 4k downsample to 1080p stable framerate system as a backup if it's not a well optimized PC port like DOOM or Mad Max.

Also looking forward to using it for FFXV once the Pro patch is out in December and for The Last Guardian.  The new Dual Shock is fantastic and if I pick up PS VR it's going to be sooooo much better with Pro at 1080p vs sub-1080p res. 

If I didn't have a PS4, would I get Pro?  Absolutely.  If I had a PS4, would I upgrade to Pro?  Depends.  If I had a 970 or better GPU, nah, only if I had $$$ to spend and are anal about IQ on console exclusive games.  If I didn't have a high spec gaming PC and I cared about image quality, then yeah I'd probably upgrade. 

Also if you play Battlefield 1 on console, I'd upgrade.  Improvement is pretty major in framerate & visuals there.

[bork]

I have one coming today (assuming it actually gets delivered on time- 'tis the season for fuck-ups and delays).  Only got it because Amazon was selling the system for $340 and offering about $150 for the original PS4 model.  I had a couple of games I wanted to trade and in total paid $150 to 'upgrade'.  That's acceptable to me.  Was otherwise in no rush to get one since it seems like a minor upgrade and there's reported performance issues in some games.

I don't have a 4K monitor or TV and don't plan on getting one for at least another year or two, so I'm interested in seeing the various game performance and visual enhancements.  I don't have too many Pro compatible games but I know Titanfall 2 is supposed to look a lot better.

I've watched some comparison videos -and I know, I know, Youtube is not going to be the best place to see all the fine details- but I could barely see a difference with Watchdogs 2.  Looked like slightly less jaggies here and there and that was about it.  In general most of the reviews/impressions I've seen/read seem to be pretty lukewarm to it.

Let's face it, this is in no way going to match a good PC in the graphics department, and it's not true 4K (just upscaling), but it's still absolutely worth it for new PS4 users.  But I'm curious in seeing how well it seems worth it for current owners.  Right now there's just not enough games taking advantage of it for people to rush out and buy one, and I have to wonder if there ever will be.

[bork]

OK, so my thoughts on this thing.

-The Pro has a matte top that is a single piece.  This means that the hard drive bay is no longer accessible by removing a top piece and instead you just pop off a small plastic piece in the back, unscrew a single screw, and the bay slides out for replacement.  The screw on my unit felt like someone had poured superglue into the hole, as it would not budge.  Had to spend several minutes using pliers to loosen it, but otherwise nice n' easy.

-Can't comment on system transfers, since I just did a clean setup and re-downloaded stuff overnight, since I wanted to use the same 2TB HDD from my old system and didn't have an extra drive large enough to back it up onto.

-Nice having actual physical power and eject buttons again.  They're still too tiny though.

-The console is really not that much bigger than the original PS4, but still larger enough that it might stick out of the shelf in your entertainment center.  I've never had this happen with any other console, but this thing just barely juts out from the shelf on mine.

-The "new controller" is the same as the old controller.  Yay, translucent part of the touchpad for the lightbar to show through.   What is actually different is that you can now use this controller with the cable as a full USB controller instead of bluetooth, making for less input lag or easy use on a PC.

-Disc game installs are as noisy as ever, but once games are installed, I would say that this system runs quieter than the O.G. model. 

-Pro-enhanced games.  Tried Titanfall 2 (multiplayer) and saw no noticeable differences that really stuck out compared to the game running on the original PS4.  I've seen the screenshot comparisons and it's pretty noticeable side by side, but when playing the game...it looked the same to me.  I dunno.  Maybe it's just in the campaign mode?  Tried Fate/Extella, which is supposed to be Pro compatible, and while I didn't see a visual difference, unless I'm going crazy here...it ran noticeably better.  The game generally maintains a smooth 60 FPS on the original PS4, but has some dips.  When I was messing with it on the Pro, the framerate was rock solid, even with the screen absolutely filled to the brim with enemies.  Nice.

-Are all games supposed to be downsampled when playing on a 1080P screen or is it only the Pro titles? 

[archnemesis]

-Are all games supposed to be downsampled when playing on a 1080P screen or is it only the Pro titles?

Unless a game has been patched to take advantage of the Pro's increased performance, it will run the same as on an original PS4.

[bork]

Ah OK, thanks. 

[archnemesis]

It would be awesome if it worked automatically, but I suspect that many games would break by the increased clock speed.

[Rufus]

How did MS do it then? Last I heard, some titles perform better on the One S. Or are those just the ones that had adaptive vsync or unlocked framerates?

[archnemesis]

I believe they just upscale the output video signal. Since no new information has been added to the original image it will not improve the image quality. The Scorpio will be different.

[Rufus]

Digital Foundry has answers to my question (ie minor improvements in games with dynamic resolutions and unlocked framerates).




Maybe they can let this go because the enhancements are so minor that it's never going to cause an issue. No need for a "compatibility mode" or patching then. And yeah, I guess this will have to change with Scorpio.

[Cerveza mas fina]

Yeah the difference is so minimal it doesnt matter

Scorpio will benefit from how ms makes their first party games with dynamic rez

[a slime appears]

I've been using a PS Pro for a while now and it's the reason why I didn't buy one for myself.

PS Pro update is minimal at best. Only worth it if you don't already own a PS4 and have a 4KTV with HDR.

If you don't fall into the scenario above you're wasting money that could've been spent on a better GPU for your PC which would give you actual noticeable improvements. Meaningful PS Pro Support will be drying up soon but it'll pick back up once Scorpio launches.

[AdmiralViscen]

I got for $340 on Amazon and had a $150 gift card

Of course now I'm on the hook for a $70 2TB hdd, but I got a $20 shutterfly credit that my wife would have used for Christmas gifts anyway, so I guess I'm ok

I do have a 4k hdr tv. Two of them, and I want a PS4 on both so I was gonna get a second one anyway. I wish this played UHD BRD

[Rahxephon91]

I have a Vizo M Series 4k tv which I like plenty, but I've never watched any 4k stuff. I bought the tv over a regular 1080p one because the reviews said that the tv was better even as a 1080p tv. I have the Pro, but leave it in 1080p mode. I find that the Pro supported games look very clean with super sampling. Image quality is pretty damn good and honestly that's a nice thing to me. Performance gains don't seem to be that big. I can't say if it's worth it. I like the higher frame rate in Battlefield and Tomb Raider and find the image quality in games like Titanfall 2, Watchdogs 2, Deus Ex, FFXV, and so on to be noticeable, but not to the point of OMG!

I mean I'm at this point solely a console gamer and also a Playstation fanboy so I was going to get this just to get the best out of my games from that perspective. I like it, but I can't say it was super worth it.

[benjipwns]

Digital Foundry has answers to my question (ie minor improvements in games with dynamic resolutions and unlocked framerates).

Maybe they can let this go because the enhancements are so minor that it's never going to cause an issue. No need for a "compatibility mode" or patching then. And yeah, I guess this will have to change with Scorpio.

i suspect MS has actually implemented some kind of DX like software "shell" as always should have been their goal from 2000

one reason the xbox is so hard to emulate even though it's "off the shelf" parts is because it has a very specific set of calls and such that you need to know from the undocumented nvidia chip, it doesn't even make the same calls as regular nvidia hardware or something

notice that microsoft has basically not only essentially  flawlessly gotten xbox 360 games going on the one compared to the xbox backwards compat disaster, but they've also fixed framerates in those games too simply due to the more powerful hardware

the fan 360 emulator Xenia runs more games than cxbx ever has despite a 11 year head start lol

it seems sony had no software-side plans for this? i suspect that's also why they're struggling apparently to get even the PS2 emulation working right while something like PSCX2 comparatively doesn't have any issues and just brute forces through fillrates and stuff

DF has also suggested that the Switch likely has enough overhead to emulate GCN/Wii and certain Wii U titles considering Nintendo can do those at a far lower level than Dolphin does, and Dolphin runs a lot of things well on a standard Shield, especially since based on Nintendo's past emulation efforts they do just the bare minimum of upgrades most of which are easier to implement than being accurate (like running all n64 games at 640x480 on the wii's emulator)

[benjipwns]

so amazingly creepy

Couple more playable examples:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

[close]

[bork]

I wish this played UHD BRD

I really, really don't get this.  Especially when Sony is one of the companies behind blu-ray in the first place and because the Xbone S plays them.  Guess this is a feature we'll see on the next console update in a year or two. 

I have a Vizo M Series 4k tv which I like plenty, but I've never watched any 4k stuff. I bought the tv over a regular 1080p one because the reviews said that the tv was better even as a 1080p tv. I have the Pro, but leave it in 1080p mode. I find that the Pro supported games look very clean with super sampling. Image quality is pretty damn good and honestly that's a nice thing to me. Performance gains don't seem to be that big. I can't say if it's worth it. I like the higher frame rate in Battlefield and Tomb Raider and find the image quality in games like Titanfall 2, Watchdogs 2, Deus Ex, FFXV, and so on to be noticeable, but not to the point of OMG!

I mean I'm at this point solely a console gamer and also a Playstation fanboy so I was going to get this just to get the best out of my games from that perspective. I like it, but I can't say it was super worth it.

I look at it in that I was going to get a new console anyway.  I like to switch up for a newer model after a few years.  And I got it for a decent price.  If I couldn't have traded my PS4 in towards it, there's no way I would have bothered with this thing.  But maybe we'll see a lot more support in the next year.

[thisismyusername]

it's nice to have a 4k downsample to 1080p stable framerate system as a backup if it's not a well optimized PC port like DOOM or Mad Max.

Everyone I know hasn't had problems with Doom. I mean there's a few minor complaints around the internet, but that's every general PC release now a days.

[a slime appears]

He is saying that he likes having the PS Pro as a backup option if he can't play a game on his PC that gives him stable fps plus higher than 1080p resolution.

He was just using DOOM as an example of a game that runs great on PC but of course it does since it was made for the PC platform. Also most console to PC ports are much better on PC these days so it's an odd statement to make. Dishonored 2 is the only recent game I can think of where people report poor performance but I play it at 1440p and 60fps with all settings maxed out, so I dunno.

[Let's Cyber]

I'm interested to see the pro upgrades for games like Horizon and Mass Effect.  If there is a major difference, especially for draw distance and popin, I'll probably upgrade in the spring. 

[Rufus]

He is saying that he likes having the PS Pro as a backup option if he can't play a game on his PC that gives him stable fps plus higher than 1080p resolution.

He was just using DOOM as an example of a game that runs great on PC but of course it does since it was made for the PC platform. Also most console to PC ports are much better on PC these days so it's an odd statement to make. Dishonored 2 is the only recent game I can think of where people report poor performance but I play it at 1440p and 60fps with all settings maxed out, so I dunno.

Mafia 3 seems to be optimized poorly as well. And people were somewhat blindsided by Mankind Divided.

[bork]

Bebpo was also saying that Forza Horizon 3 and Quantum Break were supposed to be shit on PC.  I have no idea on either.

I did get ReCore when it was on sale and it seems well-optimized and runs perfectly on my PC.

[Rufus]

Right, forgot about those two. Quantum Break seems to be made for future hardware if you want more than a stable 30 fps.

[archnemesis]

The DX11 version of Quantum Break is supposed to run better, http://www.eurogamer.net/articles/digitalfoundry-2016-quantum-break-on-dx11-is-better-than-dx12

Microsoft was trying to push DX12 and their new store and that ruined the performance at launch.

[Bebpo]

He is saying that he likes having the PS Pro as a backup option if he can't play a game on his PC that gives him stable fps plus higher than 1080p resolution.

He was just using DOOM as an example of a game that runs great on PC but of course it does since it was made for the PC platform. Also most console to PC ports are much better on PC these days so it's an odd statement to make. Dishonored 2 is the only recent game I can think of where people report poor performance but I play it at 1440p and 60fps with all settings maxed out, so I dunno.

In my experience from playing a lot of games, PC ports are worse than ever in the PS4/Xbox One gen.  There's still the issue that has been around forever where 95% of multi-platform AAA games are made for console first and then thrown together for PC, but at least in PS2/X360 gen the game engines were basic enough you could pretty much buy a $500 GPU and brute force at least 1080p/60fps on most games.  But the engines being used these days outside Unreal Engine which is taking a long time for games to transition to UE4, are just not optimized and pushing heavy lighting and stuff so even Titan or 1080gtx struggle for 60fps in so many games.

Batman AK, Watchdogs 1, Mafia 3, Dishonored 2, Quantum Break, Horizon 3, Far Cry 4, Just Cause 3, Rise of Tomb Raider, AC Unity are badly or not well optimized on PC (hence all of them had dozen pages long PC Performance threads at GAF on launch), although AC Unity at least has the excuse that it was pushing visuals so high, it was just too much for this gen. 

Good PC ports have been Doom, Titanfall 2, MGSV, Battlefield, Mad Max, Gears 4, hard to think of other AAA stuff but I'm know there's some others that have been good.

I'm not even talking about 4k or anything, at launch none of those games could run 1080p and keep 60fps without stutter with a minimal AA (4x) and the graphics on high with the best GPU of the time when they released.  Many of them couldn't do it with no AA & lower visuals either.  Even GTAV had lots of problems on PC and the PS4 release was smoother and more consistent at launch, but at least with GTAV you could brute force it and so I bought a second GPU and got it running generally good & gorgeous with drops.

I don't see the trend changing for AAA.  PC will always be the smaller market so most 60 million dollar games will be made for consoles with the PC version thrown together later and problematic and as the GPU curve keeps getting less monumental, PCs will still struggle to play stuff built for a GPU 10x less powerful and you'll need a GPU 20x times more powerful to do it now and those won't exist for another few years.  But then we'll hit the next generation of consoles and be back to shit ports again.  Unless devs care, PC versions are often bad for AAA.  For indie and everything else that doesn't need high end graphics, yeah PC is fine.

A few years ago I spent about $1200 on GPU for the first time ever + highest cpu & ram.  Thought I'd give being a master PC race thing a try.  While I've gotten some great lookers out of it, my overall feel was it absolutely wasn't worth it and I'm never doing it again.  I'll stick with a $500-600 GPU every 4-5 years and that'll play 90% of all the optimized stuff fine, and the unoptimized AAA I'll get on console now that PS4 Pro & likely Scorpio have fixed what I considered the main problem and why I always would play on PC which is clean image quality. 

[Bebpo]

Also if we start talking about then flood of Japanese games & starting to come to PC, there's not even a conversation.  PC versions mostly fucked up, stick with console and now with Pro you'll get console + good IQ or 60fps which will be even further away from the shit PC ports where everyone calls for Durante to save them.

And it's not even a tech thing.  The fucking Dynasty Warrior games that can run on a tin can are ports are the last gen PS3 versions or with One Piece DW the VITA version instead of PS4 smhhhhhhh

Japanese games have always had good aesthetic just almost always had shit IQ because developers over there don't seem to care about spending any overhead on antialiasing or AF to reduce shimmer and jaggies.  Theoretically just throwing on a quick and easy 1440p or 1800p version on Pro when downsampled to 1080p will provide clean IQ to go along with the great aesthetic of Japanese games.

[benjipwns]

Don't most of those titles also run like garbage on consoles? They're certainly not running 1080p/60 there either. And the Very High/Ultra settings are generally well above the console equivalents. That's not to mention any of the extras thrown in so nvidia can justify their existence.

Games are and will continue to be CPU bound, especially now.

The high end of GPUs ($1000) have always been overkill. Even the $500-600 range is pushing it. Console ports certainly are never going to push them. At some point once you've upped the textures to fill the card's RAM (and any card at 6+GB already has more than the consoles) and turned on every fancy feature the only thing you're going to get on console ports is to supersample the image five hundred times over.

The Pro isn't even upgrading current games into 1080p/60 goodness, half of them aren't even downsampling full frames at locked 30fps.

[Bebpo]

The difference is, and I admit this very much comes down to personal preference, I'll take a smooth 30fps console game without crashes or stutter or input lag that just works over a PC game that can do 45-55fps but can't do a locked 60fps since even capping at 30fps can be problematic on a lot of PC games.  Like Horzion 3 can't hold locked 60fps in various large parts of the map that you're often passing through, and there's a 30fps option to make it like the Xb1 version...which is great!  Except when you find out the 30fps cap introduces major input lag that makes everything drive like being underwater and the XB1 version at 30fps doesn't have that and is responsively closet to the 60fps PC.  And the game likes to crash on PC too.  So you're left without a good "ok, at least I'm getting the console exxperience" setting.

I don't want to settle for some uneven middleground.  Either you have a good optimized PC port that can run 60fps in which case I'll go PC, or you don't in which case I'd rather have a locked smooth 30fps console experience which hopefully Pro will bring.  Watchdogs 2 is really nice on PS4 Pro with great graphics, perfect IQ and smooth 30fps with no weird oddities.  If games can pull that off, the Pro is my go to back up console for unoptimized PC games.  When Scorpio comes out, maybe that will be.

Then again, all of this doesn't matter because when I look my gaming time, game collection, 50%+ of the games I play aren't even available on PC.  So Pro will be the best option for those.

[Great Rumbler]

Some of the Japanese PC ports recently have been a bit sketchy, but most of the ones I've played at least have run just fine with a good cpu/gpu.

[bork]

In my experience from playing a lot of games, PC ports are worse than ever in the PS4/Xbox One gen. 

Nah.  They're better now overall.  That's one of the reasons why I got back into PC gaming a few years ago.

Batman AK, Watchdogs 1, Mafia 3, Dishonored 2, Quantum Break, Horizon 3, Far Cry 4, Just Cause 3, Rise of Tomb Raider, AC Unity are badly or not well optimized on PC (hence all of them had dozen pages long PC Performance threads at GAF on launch), although AC Unity at least has the excuse that it was pushing visuals so high, it was just too much for this gen. 

So out of what you listed, I've only played Batman Arkham Knight and Rise Of The Tomb Raider.  And we all know that Batman was a rushed P.O.S. at launch -WB clearly gave no fucks about it and other games- but they later came to their senses and brought in Rocksteady to fix it.  They even went back and started supporting Mortal Kombat X again, much to everyone's shock.

Anyway, point being that from my experience, Rise Of The Tomb Raider runs perfectly fine for me (tried on two different PCs).  Zero issues.  Arkham Knight had one major issue for me when I first tried it a while back.  It wouldn't display anything in full screen properly.  There was an .ini workaround to fix that and then it was fine.  I should note that this was on my old laptop.  When I reinstalled the game on my current laptop, it ran perfectly with no issues. 

Have you played the games you mentioned above?  YMMV when it comes to PC gaming.  You never know what someone else has changed, not updated, or fucked up on their PC.

Good PC ports have been Doom, Titanfall 2, MGSV, Battlefield, Mad Max, Gears 4, hard to think of other AAA stuff but I'm know there's some others that have been good.

I have the following console ports/multi-plats from the last couple of years.  All of these games run great.  This list as indie and AAA games, and ports from all the consoles and handhelds:

spoiler (click to show/hide)

-Doom
-Dragon-Age Inquisition
-Mass Effect 3
-Metal Gear Solid V GZ
-Battlefield One
-Titanfall
-Titanfall 2
-Gears Of War 4
-Killer Instinct
-ReCore
-Halo 5 Forge
-Arcana Heart 3 Love Max
-Assault Suit Leynos
-Batman Arkham (All of them)
-Binary Domain
-Blade Arcus
-Call Of Duty BLOPS III
-Darius Burst
-Dead Or Alive 5 Last Round
-Deus Ex Human Revolution
-Devil May Cry 4 SE
-Divekick
-Double Dragon Neon
-Dynasty Warriors 8 XL
-Dragonball Xenoverse
-Dragon's Dogma Dark Arisen
-Ducktales Remastered
-Skyrim
-Fairy Fencer F
-Fallout 4
-Guilty Gear Xrd
-Hunted The Demon's Forge
-Injustice
-Mortal Kombat 9
-Mortal Kombat XL
-Jet Set Radio
-KOF '98 UM
-KOF 2002 UM
-KOF XIII
-Koihime Enbu
-Lara Croft And The Guardian Of Light
-Lara Croft And The Temple Of Osiris
-The Legend Of Dark Witch
-Megadimension Neptunia VII
-Melty Blood Actress Again Current Code
-Metal Gear Rising Revengeance
-Mighty Switch Force Hyper Drive Edition
-Mirror's Edge Catalyst
-Onechanbara Z2 Chaos
-Pac-Man Championship DX
-Pac-Man Championship 2
-Resident Evil 6
-Resident Evil Revelations
-Resident Evil Revelations 2
-Rise Of The Tomb Raider
-Rocket League
-Saint's Row The Third
-Saint's Row IV
-Saint's Row Gat Outta Hell
-Samurai Warriors 4-II
-Sayonara Umihara Kawase
-Senran Kagura Shinovi Versus
-Senran Kagura Bon Appetite
-Shantae And The Pirates' Curse
-Shantae Risky's Revenge
-Skullgirls
-Sonic & All-Stars Racing Transformed
-South Park The Stick Of Truth
-Ultra Street Fighter IV
-Street Fighter V
-Street Fighter X Tekken
-Tomb Raider
-Transistor
-Under Night In-Birth Exe Late

[close]

Have some of these games had issues, even major ones, at times?  Sure.  But they were fixed.  And long gone are the days when console gaming was just plug and play.  Console games also have issues and get patches and all that shit.

I don't see the trend changing for AAA.  PC will always be the smaller market

Isn't PC the larger market world-wide?  There's also some territories where PC gaming is pretty much all that's available.

[bork]

Also if we start talking about then flood of Japanese games & starting to come to PC, there's not even a conversation.  PC versions mostly fucked up, stick with console and now with Pro you'll get console + good IQ or 60fps which will be even further away from the shit PC ports where everyone calls for Durante to save them.

And it's not even a tech thing.  The fucking Dynasty Warrior games that can run on a tin can are ports are the last gen PS3 versions or with One Piece DW the VITA version instead of PS4 smhhhhhhh

Koei-Tecmo does not equal all Japanese PC ports.  They are absolutely the company to avoid on PC.  You either have just shit ports filled with technical issues, lazy ports missing features (DOA5 Last Round runs great on PC, for example, but is missing a lot of online features and is a PS3 port instead of a PS4 port), and then the rare actual good port (Samurai Warriors 4-II actually runs well and looks great).

But that's just them.

Japanese games have always had good aesthetic just almost always had shit IQ because developers over there don't seem to care about spending any overhead on antialiasing or AF to reduce shimmer and jaggies.  Theoretically just throwing on a quick and easy 1440p or 1800p version on Pro when downsampled to 1080p will provide clean IQ to go along with the great aesthetic of Japanese games.

Depends on the dev.  Just like with consoles. 

I think you need to try some more games and stop just taking GAF's word on everything for the stuff you haven't played.  Steam has an awesome return policy.  I used it to try One Piece Burning Blood on PC a little while ago.  The game has little in the way of options, yes, but looks and runs exactly like the PS4 version, only with better AA.

[bork]

Some of the Japanese PC ports recently have been a bit sketchy, but most of the ones I've played at least have run just fine with a good cpu/gpu.

Yup.  Times have changed.  The days of shit ports are over.  There's more and more Japanese releases coming out nowadays, too.

[archie4208]

Even if there is a shitty PC port, new technology will eventually brute force it so it runs well.

A poorly performing console game is gonna be shit forever. 

Isn't PC the larger market world-wide?  There's also some territories where PC gaming is pretty much all that's available.

League of Legends's playerbase is bigger than all the current gen consoles combined.

The only area consoles do consistently better in is $60 AAA games.

[benjipwns]

I also think you're really over-glorifying the PS2/360 era of ports too. Most were hot garbage with like two settings to set to low/medium/high, maybe some control over shadows, a handful of resolutions, then Vsync, filtering and AA. Especially the PS2 ports. Half the games or more from that era don't even have 16:9 support.

360 was nothing to write home about either, especially when it was the lead platform early in the generation. Basically nothing was multithreaded on PC leaving you with one core, how many UE3 games needed ini editing? Nearly everyone had way too low of FOVs. The Arkham games all have had problems and run like dogshit at release. GTA IV ran far worse than GTA V ever did. And III was a disaster of a PC version since it draws everything on every pass. No matter how many buildings are in the way. Games like Borderlands and Bulletstorm and BioShock were straight dump ports, others like Saints Row 2 were even worse than brute force ports. EA and UbiSoft both quickly dropped making unique PC amped versions of titles like Burnout Paradise, Mass Effect and Assassins Creed for straight porting of the console games. Even one-time "WE LUV PC GAMERS showcases" like Far Cry 2 needed patches upon patches before they had basic expected PC functions.

How many games never got any of the DLC? Or just half of it?

Sports games died in the PS2 era until EA revived FIFA in recent years and 2K has done good by the NBA series for the most part. And that was four games into the generation before they even started. FIFA was like six games.

The advantage was that the PS2 released with technology that predated the first "shaders" and the 360 was around for so long that PCs surpassed it at least twice over even as the tech crawled comparatively on PC. (see: Crysis running on a 2016 machine vs. 2006 machine)

DICE games were no more busted on PC than they are generally, same with everything BioWare and Bethesda has done and continues to do. Call of Duty didn't even target 720/60 on consoles and each version increasingly added PC only features in terms of tech.

[Bebpo]

FYI Bork, the games I'm specifically talking about I am talking about first hand (outside Koei-Tecmo games where I just read about their quality).  Like with Rise of Tomb Raider, when it came out in the first month or so the game really couldn't get to 60fps, especially in certain areas like the Geothermal Valley and had some crashing issues.  It was an alright port, but it wasn't great.  It was acceptable and I'd still play it over the PS4 Pro version.

On your list, a lot of the games you listed are small low-graphic indie stuff.  I mean Divekick?  Of course the PC versions are gonna be fine.  I'm mainly talking about AAA 40 million or higher budget games that push graphics because those are the ones where like every other release has bad or average PC performance.  But yeah, you still brought up a few more that I didn't remember. 

To be honest, a lot of this seems directed by the publisher.  The EA stuff generally runs well on PC although I remember Criterion's Need for Speed follow up to Burnout Paradise was locked 30fps with issues, Ubisoft games are ok generally but can be a little iffy on optimization, Capcom stuff is typically good, Koei-Tecmo lol, Namco Bandai is generally poor and needing Durante fixes, etc...

Some of the Japanese PC ports recently have been a bit sketchy, but most of the ones I've played at least have run just fine with a good cpu/gpu.

Yup.  Times have changed.  The days of shit ports are over.  There's more and more Japanese releases coming out nowadays, too.

Second part is true, but I largely disagree with the first.  There are some Japanese companies putting effort into their PC ports, but there are just as many who release awful ports that are either broke forever or Durante needs to fix them.  As a rule of thumb I'm never going to buy a PC version of a Japanese game blind.  Like I might pick up Berserk on PC but I'll wait to see reviews of how it performs/looks compared to the PS4 version.

I also think you're really over-glorifying the PS2/360 era of ports too. Most were hot garbage with like two settings to set to low/medium/high, maybe some control over shadows, a handful of resolutions, then Vsync, filtering and AA. Especially the PS2 ports. Half the games or more from that era don't even have 16:9 support.

360 was nothing to write home about either, especially when it was the lead platform early in the generation. Basically nothing was multithreaded on PC leaving you with one core, how many UE3 games needed ini editing? Nearly everyone had way too low of FOVs. The Arkham games all have had problems and run like dogshit at release. GTA IV ran far worse than GTA V ever did. And III was a disaster of a PC version since it draws everything on every pass. No matter how many buildings are in the way. Games like Borderlands and Bulletstorm and BioShock were straight dump ports, others like Saints Row 2 were even worse than brute force ports. EA and UbiSoft both quickly dropped making unique PC amped versions of titles like Burnout Paradise, Mass Effect and Assassins Creed for straight porting of the console games. Even one-time "WE LUV PC GAMERS showcases" like Far Cry 2 needed patches upon patches before they had basic expected PC functions.

Sports games died in the PS2 era until EA revived FIFA in recent years and 2K has done good by the NBA series for the most part. And that was four games into the generation before they even started. FIFA was like six games.

The advantage was that the PS2 released with technology that predated the first "shaders" and the 360 was around for so long that PCs surpassed it at least twice over even as the tech crawled comparatively on PC. (see: Crysis running on a 2016 machine vs. 2006 machine)

DICE games were no more busted on PC than they are generally, same with everything BioWare and Bethesda has done and continues to do. Call of Duty didn't even target 720/60 on consoles and each version increasingly added PC only features in terms of tech.

This also true, there have always been bad PC ports.  Although I wouldn't necessarily call lack of graphic options bad.  See, as a hardcore PC gamer I've always been fine with console ports looking identical to their counter-parts.  I feel like graphics are good enough these days on console.  I don't need anything graphically improved besides being able to run at a higher resolution, use AA, and get 60fps.  Even the old PS2 ports you could easily get 60fps and whatever resolution you're at for the most part and downsample for AA if needed.

[benjipwns]

That is far from my experience with PS2 ports during the years they were originally released. Especially out of the box.

[Bebpo]

Probably depended on if they were developed in Japan.  I know a lot of Japanese games like Silent Hill 2 were weaker looking than the console versions.  Missing effects and stuff.

[Great Rumbler]

The biggest problem with PC ports back in the PS2/early PS3 era was that the big Western devs were scrapping PC development in favor of consoles [death of PC and all that], so a lot of games were being shifted from being built from the ground up on PC to being built for consoles with a PC port tacked on at the end as mostly an afterthought. Probably wasn't really until the late 00's when Steam got huge that PC ports started getting more attention on average.

That is far from my experience with PS2 ports during the years they were originally released. Especially out of the box.

Console ports with no controller support. 

[Positive Touch]

uh silent hill pc ports all looked fantastic. they just had shit customization options, and sh2 was very unstable

[thisismyusername]

A few years ago I spent about $1200 on GPU for the first time ever

I know you're throwing RAM in, but at that. You really don't need a $1000+ GPU for 1080p even in badly optimized ports. It's only recently that stuff like Watch Dogs 2 are "unoptimized" that even basic GPU's can't keep up with the other hardware helping.

[Joe Molotov]

uh silent hill pc ports all looked fantastic. they just had shit customization options, and sh2 was very unstable

They look better than the Silent Hill HD collection. #FuckKonami

[Bebpo]

A few years ago I spent about $1200 on GPU for the first time ever

I know you're throwing RAM in, but at that. You really don't need a $1000+ GPU for 1080p even in badly optimized ports. It's only recently that stuff like Watch Dogs 2 are "unoptimized" that even basic GPU's can't keep up with the other hardware helping.

I wanted 4K downsample/60fps which is why I went full out.  I'd never spent more than $400 on a card before then.  Plus had some extra cash flush so I figured why not go full out on a gaming rig build with best cpu/gpu/ram/ssd everything.  In retrospect wasn't worth it.  Spent about $2,200 I think and probably could've spent about half that and most optimized games would run the same.  The idea was to brute force the rest but that's been hit or miss.

[archie4208]

The only card that can get remotely close to 4k/60 fps right now is a Pascal Titan, and even then that isn't guaranteed.

The Volta cards might make the dream happen at a reasonable price.

[Bebpo]

Well, to be fair, I get 4k/60fps on 75% of games.  It's only the AC Unity type stuff and beyond that's no way unless they are really well optimized.  I was running Doom at 4k/60fps no prob for instance.  Even GTAV I could get 4k/60fps with some settings lowered and being ok with some drops. 

Also another thing is that I'm usually a couple years backlogged, so like I just played Dishonored 1 last month and played that at 4k/60fps though I did have to drop a few settings down.  But yeah, typically games from 2013 or older I can 4k/60fps.  Or maybe 1600p/60fps at worst (btw 4k is the dumbest term since it's really 2k, when you talk about 1600p/1800p they seem far from 4k, but 1600p/1800p/2160p makes more sense).

Now 4k/30fps is doable on a lot of stuff on PC with a good GPU.

But that's the core of it.  I mean, going back to PS4 Pro, if a dinky little $400 PS4 box can pull off near 4k/30fps with generally the "high" equivalent on pc (but not Ultra).  That's pretty fucking good!  Especially considering that like you said, even the top $1000 cards can't do 4k/60fps, so you're left with 4k/30fps.  Scorpio should be even closer.  At the end of the day, these are great consoles and bringing the console field back up to modern reasonable gaming PC standards.  We're never going to get a console again that surpasses the top PCs, although first party titles designed specifically for one spec can still push out amazing stuff like Uncharted 4.

Look, what I was saying isn't that PS4 Pro is better than a PC, but that because it's not too far off now, it's a solid alternative for the multi-platform games that have troubled PC ports as well as exclusives & Japanese games.  Obviously I'd would never tell anyone to buy a PS4 Pro/Scorpio over a decent gaming PC.  If they had $500-800 to spend, definitely go for the PC.  But like how everyone would used to buy a Nintendo system as a "2nd console", a PS4 Pro makes a good second system for the reasons above.  Especially if you care about IQ and like jaggy free, solid performance gaming.

[benjipwns]

But that's the core of it.  I mean, going back to PS4 Pro, if a dinky little $400 PS4 box can pull off near 4k/30fps with generally the "high" equivalent on pc (but not Ultra).  That's pretty fucking good! 

But isn't the core of it that the PS4 Pro isn't pulling that off? And probably won't be going forward?

Rendering lower and then scaling the final image up doesn't really count...does it?

[Rufus]

It doesn't, but at the distance you're sitting from a TV it probably doesn't matter. Then again, can you appreciate the difference?

spoiler (click to show/hide)

I don't own a TV, so I have zero frame of reference for this.

[close]

[Bebpo]

But that's the core of it.  I mean, going back to PS4 Pro, if a dinky little $400 PS4 box can pull off near 4k/30fps with generally the "high" equivalent on pc (but not Ultra).  That's pretty fucking good! 

But isn't the core of it that the PS4 Pro isn't pulling that off? And probably won't be going forward?

Rendering lower and then scaling the final image up doesn't really count...does it?

That's why I said near 4k.  To me 1800p is close enough to 2160p.  When downsampling both to a a 50" 1080p TV it's very hard to tell the difference.  On PC if I can't pull off 2160p I usually drop down to 1600p, so PS4 Pro pulling off 1800p/30fps on Watchdogs 2 is pretty damn good imo.  Holds up pretty well to GTAV at 4k on my PC.  And most games are holding 30fps smooth.  W2 for example had minor framedrops to 28fps at launch and within 2 days of launch was patched to maintain 30fps on Pro at 1800p.  Pro is doing well and these are just the rushed optimizations of launch.  When developers have a the Pro around and can test/optimize a bit along the way, games should be more stable and I wouldn't be surprised if most were 1800p/30fps.  Although Uncharted at 1440p still looks gorgeous and is a nice improvement over 1080p, so I'm ok with 1440p or 1600p if they can't get locked 30fps on 1800p.

Then again if I had a 4k TV I'd probably care more about native 4k verses 1800p checkboard rendered to 4k, but I'll deal with that one day when I upgrade from my 1080p plasma.  All I care about now is a downsampled clean image that maintains sharpness.

[AdmiralViscen]

Maybe I'll plug this in soon

[bork]

How many games never got any of the DLC? Or just half of it?

In some cases, however, this was due to DLC being exclusive to certain platforms, like the extra levels in Tomb Raider Underworld.  That was the dumbest shit.

FYI Bork, the games I'm specifically talking about I am talking about first hand (outside Koei-Tecmo games where I just read about their quality).  Like with Rise of Tomb Raider, when it came out in the first month or so the game really couldn't get to 60fps, especially in certain areas like the Geothermal Valley and had some crashing issues.  It was an alright port, but it wasn't great.  It was acceptable and I'd still play it over the PS4 Pro version.

I got it at release.  At the time the PC I was using couldn't run it maxed out, but I turned down a bunch of details and it ran great.  Never crashed.

And now?  It runs maxed at 2560x1080 for me at 60 FPS.

On your list, a lot of the games you listed are small low-graphic indie stuff.  I mean Divekick?  Of course the PC versions are gonna be fine.  I'm mainly talking about AAA 40 million or higher budget games that push graphics because those are the ones where like every other release has bad or average PC performance.  But yeah, you still brought up a few more that I didn't remember. 

I know...I mentioned that my list had near everything on the budget spectrum.  And I did that because over a decade ago, even some of the most simplistic games could run like shit on PC but were smooth on consoles.  Again...times have changed.

To be honest, a lot of this seems directed by the publisher.  The EA stuff generally runs well on PC although I remember Criterion's Need for Speed follow up to Burnout Paradise was locked 30fps with issues, Ubisoft games are ok generally but can be a little iffy on optimization, Capcom stuff is typically good, Koei-Tecmo lol, Namco Bandai is generally poor and needing Durante fixes, etc...

Some of Capcom's games are amazing on PC in terms of performance.  Like, I threw RE6 on my little GPD WIN and it looks AMAZING and runs at an insanely high framerate.  This is with a very low resolution, sure, but on that tiny 3DS XL sized screen, it looks insanely good.  Namco seems to be hit or miss.  Like I said, One Piece ran great.  But I didn't need it since I have it on PS4 and Vita.  Now, that game in particular does run at 30 FPS and people whined about it, but the devs stated that it was intended to run at 30 FPS by design, which is why it isn't 60 on PC as well.  Bullshit?  Could be.

Second part is true, but I largely disagree with the first.  There are some Japanese companies putting effort into their PC ports, but there are just as many who release awful ports that are either broke forever or Durante needs to fix them.  As a rule of thumb I'm never going to buy a PC version of a Japanese game blind.  Like I might pick up Berserk on PC but I'll wait to see reviews of how it performs/looks compared to the PS4 version.

And the same thing can be said for console games as well...except we don't get someone else who can fix them.    A shit port is a shit port.  It's not exclusive to one single platform.

Probably depended on if they were developed in Japan.  I know a lot of Japanese games like Silent Hill 2 were weaker looking than the console versions.  Missing effects and stuff.

uh silent hill pc ports all looked fantastic. they just had shit customization options, and sh2 was very unstable

Yup.  I don't know what Bebpo is talking about here.  Silent Hill 3 was in fact the first PC game I purchased and tried when I got my first PC in 2004 (a "monster" Alienware laptop-- had only had Apple before this) and it looked amazing for the time.   

[a slime appears]

Case closed: